Tag: lotusphere

For those of you who have attended Lotusphere, you knew it was a special event. Sadly, 2015 is the last year for Lotusphere (aka IBM Connect, aka IBM ConnectED). My colleague Stuart McIntyre sums it up in his blog the essence of what that event has meant to so many people who attended. Enjoy the good read.

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Kristin Keene, Events Manager for ConnectED formerly known as Lotusphere and Connect joined Oliver Heinz’s monthly ICS Community webcast today, and she shared some more information about the upcoming event:Why the change?Based on decisions with business partners, clients and experts, IBM determined they had swung the pendulum too far away from their technical roots with the most recent conferences. People felt that the LOB and marketing content was starting to overshadow the event.

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Lots of updates for IBM ConnectED! Per the site, “In 2015, IBM Connect will transform into an even more in-depth technical event, “IBM ConnectED” that provides the deep ‘nuts and bolts’ technical experience that is so important to our long-standing technical community.” I am very excited about this, as the technical content is why I go to Connect/Lotusphere.

In 2015, IBM Connect will transform into an even more in-depth technical event,“IBM ConnectED” that provides the deep “nuts and bolts” technical experience that is so important to our long-standing technical community.

Specifically designed for technologists of all levels, including CIOs, IT managers and practitioners, this new event will offer deep-dive technical sessions, demos, labs and roundtables, access to IBM technical experts, and more.

JumpStarts focus on introductory and overview material to help get you ready for the more in-depth technical sessions coming later in the week. Master Class sessions are designed for the practitioners already in the trenches.

Social Business Online

The conference information and messaging system.

Birds-of-a-Feather sessions

Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are a popular feature of our conference, bringing together communities and individuals with similar interests. These sessions are informal, interactive discussion groups for like-minded attendees to share ideas and experiences in an small group, open forum setting.

Solutions Showcase

Visit with our sponsors and exhibitors, a venue for attendees eager to find the best social business services and solutions.

Labs

Architects, developers, engineers, and consultants with a wide range of backgrounds and expertise are available to talk, to problem solve, and to help answer your questions or to simply brainstorm.

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From September 2012 thru part of November 2012, Notes Code and sponsors will provide opportunities for one lucky person to win a trip to Lotusphere/Connect 2013. This package includes a conference badge, air fare and hotel accomodations for the conference. You may enter more than once. No purchase necessary.

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The IBM Social Business team is eagerly ramping up to host IBM Connect 2013. We’re joining two information packed events into one — the long-standing Lotusphere conference and last year’s IBM Connect, IBM Connect 2013 reflects our broader focus on the IBM social business story — from a technical, C-level, and line of business aspect. As THE social business leader, IBM is best qualified to meet and support organizations wherever they are in their social business journey.

Business leaders and technical professionals from around the world will join us January 27-31 in Orlando, Florida for what promises to be an informative and interactive event. For our loyal Lotusphere attendees, the conference will still provide extensive technical content, but will also provide a more expansive focus on the value IBM and business leaders have placed on social collaboration, portal, web experiences, content management, analytics, process management, commerce and supporting professional services as top priorities and key competitive differentiators.

In the 2012 IBM CEO Study, leaders told us that the single biggest contributor to creating sustained economic value is their people. During the conference, we will focus on how people and technology connect to create competitive advantage.

Throughout the conference, industry pioneers will offer insight and actionable content on the role that our game-changing social software and services have in transforming the way business is conducted. Click the Save the Date Flyer button to send an invitation to your clients and partners today! Make sure IBM Connect is one of their must attend 2013 events.

IBM announced and demoed the next generation of its social networking platform, IBM Connections 4 which will ship later this year. Connections 4 will provide:

A sophisticated news/activity stream. Using the OpenSocial 2.0 standard for application integration with particular emphasis on a portion of the standard that allows applications to be embedded in a social media activity stream, Connections will allow users to view and interact with content from any third party solution through a social interface, right alongside their company’s content, including email and calendar. The embedded experience of the news feed will allow employees from any department inside an organization to explore structured and unstructured data such as Twitter feeds, weather data, videos, log files, SAP applications, electronically sign documents, and quickly act on the data as part of their everyday work experience. For example, an employee could share a document with colleagues, approve a transaction from an SAP system, act on a notification required in a business process like an insurance claim, and share content such as status updates and files, all from IBM Connections. The embedded experience and single point of access allows users to have insight at their fingertips and share data from any place, whether on the road or in the office. “IBM is taking a leadership position in these integrations,” Luis Benitez, IBM’s social software product manager. “We are writing the APIs for the connections to Twitter and other social media platforms and taking the lead editor role with them as well.” “In addition to that, we are adding support for OpenSocial and OpenSocial gadgets,” said Benitez. “Companies are able to take those gadgets and run them inside Connections.” “It really creates that ‘develop once, consume everywhere’ environment that companies want.”

Social Email. Connections 4 will allow users to check their email and calendar without leaving the social environment. This version of Connections, now in beta, will provide its own web based interface for calendar and email, using OpenSocial gadgets, that will work with Lotus Domino but will also work with Microsoft Exchange. It is similar to your LinkedIn Mail, giving you access to your LotusNotes Mail and Calendar (or your Exchange email) directly within the social platform, including the ability to view attachments. “Very soon, you won’t be able to see email and social networking separate. Email will not die, it will in fact have more flavour and will be more integrated.” — Neha Gupta, senior research analyst, Gartner

Enhanced Analytics. Connections 4 will include an upgraded analytics capabilities and real-time data monitoring, powered by Cognos, which can be applied both internally and externally. The engine will be able to monitor the social network as a whole, informing decision makers on how the platform is being utilized and by whom. With this information in hand, Connections will enable “one click” creation of social networks (communities), either internally or externally, to quickly respond to changing trends or negative sentiment. Community owners will be able to see important metrics about community participation. The analytics engine will also help you filter your activity stream to bring to your attention the most important work you need to do.

IBM Connections Enterprise Content Edition. IBM Connections Enterprise Content Edition, was announced at Lotusphere as an integrated social content management solution that combines the scalability of social networking with enterprise content management and enhanced compliance and control features sought by users in regulated industries. Designed to manage the entire life cycle of office documents, web and social content, IBM Connections Enterprise Content Edition increases the ability to share knowledge, gain expertise and create high-value content quickly through advanced content, document management and workflow use cases. It’s this solution that will enable you to store all your documents within the Enterprise CMS repository, but work on it through social tools, like the new IBM Docs, or Connections activity stream.

Cloud – LotusLive Becomes IBM SmartCloud For Social Business

At Lotusphere, IBM announced that LotusLive will become SmartCloud for Social Business, featuring the latest enhancements to the IBM Connections social business platform as they are released to the market, in addition to hosted email, calendaring, and document collaboration. The new IBM Docs web-based collaborative editors for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations will also be available through SmartCloud for Social Business once it is released in the second half of the year. The rebranding of LotusLive reflects IBM’s desire to have a single brand—SmartCloud— over all its software as a service and cloud infrastructure offerings. Cloud computing is a growing business for IBM and one of the ways it is reaching smaller customers.

IBM is also introducing a new, lower-price for it’s SmartCloud Blackberry users. The new program is built on the world-class expertise of IBM Mobile Enterprise Services and the sophisticated security of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, IBM helps bring the type of security and reliability expectations of on-premise email to cloud email environments, including built-in end-user and administrative controls for mobile device management.

For application developers, a new Social Business Toolkit is being offered to help organizations build custom solutions integrated with LotusLive content. These OpenSocial APIs will provide access to profiles, contacts, meetings, files and community data, enabling organizations to make their business applications more social.

IBM Docs

IBM Docs is more than just editors through a browser, it provides everything needed for team collaboration around documents: real-time co-editing of documents, presence awareness for chat, live sections, commenting and discussions, assignment and notification, revision management, task management and attention management. IBM Docs, to be delivered as a feature of Connections and IBM’s cloud social software in the second half of the year, will allow either cloud or on premises deployment options. The vision for IBM Docs is to provide a comprehensive feature set, extensive integration into the IBM portfolio, rich data services, a web 2.0 style composite document architecture and access from anywhere.

IBM intends to continue developing our desktop document editors (formerly Lotus Symphony) as part of the Apache OpenOffice community. IBM will move our resources and Symphony code into the Apache OpenOffice community and continue development work on new features, updates and new releases working in the community. Apache OpenOffice the IBM Edition is planned to replace Lotus Symphony standalone and the first release is targeted for mid 2012. IBM intends to continue to support Symphony 3.0.1 embedded in Notes 8.5.x. IBM will also ship extensions that integrate Apache OpenOffice the IBM Edition with our portfolio.

In 2012 IBM will continue to bring it’s full suite of collaboration capabilities to any device. Key investments in 2012 will be made in providing high availability for Traveler, a new Android tablet email UI, partial/full wipe for Connections data, Sametime mobile meeting apps, integration of Connections/Traveler/Sametime on the device, Tivoli Endpoint Manager integration, and a mobile social reader. In one of the general session demos, IBM with partner Polycom showed the ability to easily include tablet or smartphone users into video chats using IBM Sametime.

IBM also intends to support mail, calendaring and contacts in a beta release of IBM Lotus Notes Traveler for Microsoft Windows Phone on Nokia and HTC devices; the beta is expected in the first half of 2012.Messaging – Notes/Domino

IBM plans to deliver Notes/Domino 8.5.4 which will include deployability and stability features and fixes. And, beyond 8.5.4 IBM will deliver IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, Social Edition. Social Edition will allow IBM to make new features available without the need to also upgrade to a new major release of the Domino server. Social Edition will incorporate the Activity Stream (in both Notes and iNotes) and let users work in embedded applications within the email interface. Whether accessing email from a browser or desktop, or sharing videos and files, users no longer have to travel to a third-party site. In addition, with the embedded experience of social mail, users are more efficient when engaging in activity and more responsive to day to day tasks.

IBM will also release a browser plugin that provides a browser-based version of the Notes client. Users will be able to access non-web-enabled Notes applications with just a browser, allowing a company to deploy the iNotes mail client and still provide access to Notes applications without deploying the full Notes client. The plug-in is a one time download, much like the Adobe Acrobat model, where once installed, the browser can access the Notes applications directly.

Available today, iNotes 8.5.3 provides Sametime integration based on the Sametime proxy server that eliminates Java requirements on the desktop. It provides more features and a rich chat UI. You can also leverage either Sametime or Connections business cards in iNotes. Future plans for iNotes include embedded experiences (social edition), IBM Connections Files integration, similar visual experiences by consuming and extending many of the Dojo widgets built initially for IBM Connections, leveraging IBM Docs for a web-based attachment viewer, HTML5-based files drag and drop, SAML based SSO and a fully accessible solution.

Unified Communications – Sametime

Imagine going into a group, seeing who is on-line, and inviting group members to an ad-hoc video chat (think: Google+ Hangouts for business). IBM demonstrated the capability, along with partner Polycom, to quickly establish a group video chat session.

Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 is available now and provides native IM clients for iOS and Android in addition to Blackberry. It also provides an SUT dialing client for iOS, and browser-based meetings for Android and iOS. Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 supports offline messaging, multi-file and folder transfer, n-way file transfer, and an organizational tree view of your contacts in your Contact list. Sametime Community server now runs on Domino 8.5.3 and provides support for Mac OS X. 10.7, Chrome, Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 6 and 7.

In the infrastructure, the Sametime TURN Server enables audio and video connections across firewalls. Support for dual TCSP adapters allows you to simultaneously connect Sametime to two 3rd party a/v systems. Users select the appropriate service for each call or conference and administrators manage access to each service. The Sametime Bandwidth Manager introduced in Sametime 8.5.2 allows you to protect mission critical application on the network by restricting bandwidth use for Sametime audio and video. Administrators can set policies based on classes of users and locations.

Updates to IBM Sametime Unified Telephony include a new SUT lite option that allow you to connect to any certified PBX or enterprise audio and video system via SIP with no additional back-end infrastructure needed.

New clients, including employees of Kraft, Electrolux, MIT Lincoln Labs, Colgate-Palmolive, 3M, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, Dutch Tax Office, Premier Healthcare and Brunswick are among the millions of users of IBM’s social software and collaboration services on premise, in the cloud and via mobile device. And, many customer presentations and testimonials were delivered at Lotusphere.

Electrolux. Appliance maker Electrolux is using IBM social software to connect its workforce in 60 countries and encourage a deeper level of innovation and knowledge sharing. Working with business partners Infoware Solutions and Avantime, Electrolux has seen the number of internal online communities, networks and microblogs grow rapidly. The intranet, powered by IBM Connections and Microsoft SharePoint, contains more than 100 information portals managed by more than 450 editors, and has 15,000 monthly and 9,000 daily readers. There are more than 1,100 collaboration spaces with 8,500 members. Electrolux employees are using IBM Connections microblogging to quickly spread information across the organization, including new-product and customer care ideas, and strategic organizational announcements. “Our goal is to empower our employees so they have access to content and collaboration tools anytime and from anywhere,” Ralf Larsson, director of online employee engagement and development at Electrolux, said in a statement. “Working with IBM, our employees are now becoming better engaged and more connected into specific business processes that help them expand the scope of product innovation.”

Newly Weds Foods. Chefs at Newly Weds Foods, a world leader in food ingredient technology, have reduced department travel and meeting costs by 10 percent using the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business services. The cloud services allow them to easily collaborate and quickly share information and ideas online, including new region-appropriate recipes and menus as well as ingredients such as sauces, batters, breading and seasonings. With its network of R&D, manufacturing and service facilities, which include 27 state of the art plants and 19 regional laboratories globally, Newly Weds Foods needed to find a way to more quickly accommodate the regional differences, food preparations, and ingredient availability of its food manufacturing and food service industry clients. IBM’s SmartCloud services facilitate online meetings, social networking, brainstorming and online information sharing, saving Newly Weds Foods time and money spent on travel expenses, teleconference fees and in-person meetings. “Working with IBM is helping Newly Weds Foods become a social business, connecting our many resources across the globe in an effort to bring better products to our customers,” said Bob Brindza, Manager, management information systems (MIS), Newly Weds Foods.

York University’s Schulich School of Business. In the fall of 2011, 400 students enrolled in “Management 1000” at the Schulich School of Business used IBM’s social networking services to aid their semester-long project of creating a comprehensive business plan. Students at Schulich used the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business portfolio for online meetings, file sharing, decision making, workload sharing and overall project management. The Schulich School of Business is the top-rated business school in Canada and ranked among the top business schools in the world by the Economist magazine. Schulich is also ranked as one of the globe’s top 10 schools outside the U.S. by Bloomberg Businessweek and Forbes. “The students were already familiar with consumer social networking sites, but this project exposed them to how people communicate and collaborate in a real-world business setting,” says Jean Adams, Professor, Schulich School of Business, York University. “Exposure to IBM social networking and cloud computing better prepares my students for employment in leading edge, technologically advanced work places when they graduate in four years time,” says Adams.

Bayer Material Science. Some of those organizations already transforming their operations include Bayer Material Science, a global corporation that sometimes found separate teams working on the same challenges without any collaboration or shared insight, said Kurt De Ruwe, CIO. “Different partners were sometimes working on the same problem across the world, with often duplicate efforts and no sharing,” he said, noting this approach was expensive and, in a highly competitive industry where being first-to-market can have vast financial repercussions, extremely time-consuming. Bayer Material Science implemented IBM’s new IBM Connections platform to enable fast adoption of collaboration and social networking, With Connections, employees or participating partners can quickly locate subject-matter experts, team up on projects remotely, and improve Bayer Material Science’s bottom line. The program has been so successful that Bayer plans to implement the software company-wide, he said. “We expect to see quick adoption across the whole of Bayer. Our people really like it: It’s very easy to use and very intuitive so people can focus on collaboration rather than focusing on finding their way around the software. Without a simple and intuitive platform like Connections, we would not be on the path to sustainability and change.”

Children’s Hospital Boston. A partnership made up of IBM Interactive Boston, Harvard and the Children’s Hospital of Boston worked together to create a social-media solution that could help doctors share knowledge and treat patients remotely, said Dr. Jeffrey Burns, chief of critical care at the hospital. By imparting and sharing general intelligence using platform-independent tools, the hospital can team up with and help train physicians around the world, regardless of bandwidth issues or device, he said. “There aren’t enough doctors trained in the care of a critically ill child,” said Dr. Burns. “This is an innovation to connect doctors across the globe. It is not a panacea, but it’s an extraordinary start.”

Premier Healthcare Alliance. For its part, Premier Healthcare Alliance is using social media to strengthen communications among its 2,500-member hospitals, said Denise Hatzidakis, CTO. These tools also help members address and meet regulatory and compliance issues, she said. “Connected health care is becoming the new normal,” said Hatzidakis. “For patients, this means greater certainty that they will get the most effective treatment possible. For Premier, it means providing a platform that continues enabling our partners to be exceptional.”

TD Bank. At TD Bank, a large North American bank based in Toronto, the new software has been available to workers in Canada for about a month. (The bank plans to make the software available to its 40,000 employees in the United States this week.) In Canada, it has already proved quite popular, attracting 43,000 unique users, said Wendy Arnott, the bank’s vice president for social media and digital communication. Thousands of blogs and wikis have been created by the workers themselves, including a group of small-business advisers sharing best practices and spreadsheet users sharing software and tips. Online project management groups, Ms. Arnott said, are already finding they need fewer meetings. So far, the intelligent features have been used internally, for things like finding and communicating with subject experts across the bank. “Data that is shared becomes searchable and findable in a way that could not be done before,” Ms. Arnott said. “There is a lot of power in that.”

Caterpillar. Caterpillar is a global company that serves customers in more than 180 countries around the globe, has manufacturing, marketing, logistics, service, R&D facilities along with dealer locations for a total of more than 500 locations worldwide. Caterpillar provides one of the broadest product lines in their industry. Caterpillar has upgraded Lotus Notes clients to the latest version and is deploying Connections to work more efficiently and effectively across countries and time zones, work more closely with suppliers and dealers, find and bring together expertise quickly from multiple sites and countries and build communities of practice to foster and share key areas of knowledge. Caterpillar will also widely deploy Lotus Symphony to save tens of million of dollars in software licensing and support. See their day in a life demo here http://n1-director-dmz.cat.com/asfroot/content/gis/7615_-_GIS-Day_In_The_Life.mp4

LeasePlan. LeasePlan Corporation manages over 1.4 million cars in 30 countries. They own 38 companies including a Dutch bank and have 6000+ employees. Using IBM Connections software, LeasePlan created an internal social networking platform called LinkedPeople. This open environment allows information and ideas to be shared easily and efficiently. The company also implemented IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Sametime software for instant, real-time collaboration and communication. LinkedPeople empowered staff with the ability to capture and share knowledge and to identify other employees with certain areas of expertise, who could then be contacted in real time for consultation on a wide range of topics. LeasePlan leveraged collaboration capabilities to redefine existing business processes, optimizing the productivity of internal employees, which enabled the organization to do more business with the same number of people. LeasePlan realized enough cost savings on reduced travel alone to pay for the entire solution, including licenses, implementation and maintenance.

Partner Announcements

SugarCRM. SugarCRM , the world’s fastest-growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, today announced enhanced technology integrations with IBM that enable organizations to leverage best practices for creating social businesses. In addition, SugarCRM announced that its customers, RealConnections and Virosafe are embracing the integrated technology to enhance collaboration and customer relationship management. The ways businesses connect with colleagues, customers and partners changed significantly over the last year as more mid-to-large enterprises began adopting social business applications. According to IBM’s 2011 Tech Trends Report, “The majority of respondents reported that their organizations have embraced social business to some degree to benefit from increased efficiency and collaboration.” “Every competitor is just one online search away from getting to your next customer, so sales teams need to be armed with the right tools that help them work more effectively,” said Clint Oram, CTO and co-founder of SugarCRM. “We believe IBM is a leader in social business and delivers a best-in-class technology platform for collaboration. By adding CRM to the mix, organizations have the ability to easily access and aggregate pertinent customer data from social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook so they can make more informed business decisions.”

Polycom. Polycom announced the integration of its RealPresence video solutions into IBM Sametime, Connections, and Notes. Users can launch video calls directly from Connections. Users can schedule calls to contacts by clicking a check-box for conference call information within the Lotus Notes meeting setup interface. Additionally, users can join a video meeting hosted by the Polycom. Users can directly connect point-to-point with other Sametime users and open-standards based video systems, from immersive systems to Polycom RealPresence mobile software on tablets. Users can also dial into multi-point video meetings directly from within the Sametime IM clients. The Polycom/IBM collaborative efforts have resulted in a specialized unified communications solution for the healthcare industry. The solution features content sharing and social business tools designed to facilitate a doctor explaining a complex diagnosis to a patient, for instance, consulting with a remote specialist, or sourcing data to form a treatment plan. Healthcare providers are given access to Polycom solutions directly from hospital systems and email clients to aid in improved patient outcomes with faster access and collaboration. “Video collaboration is mission critical in organizations today, and the ways companies are using video is rapidly evolving,” said Sue Hayden, executive vice president Strategic Alliances at Polycom. “Every day, more people gravitate to social networks as their primary way to share and stay connected. Polycom is committed to developing integrated solutions with leading companies like IBM to power a social video experience that helps our customers realize and maximize the inherent business value of social.” “By natively integrating Polycom RealPresence Platform with IBM’s social business applications, users can make video calls from within Sametime or Connections—whether at the office, at home, or on the road,” she continued. “With our integration with IBM, Polycom is delivering innovative, easy-to-use solutions that help our customers dramatically change how they do business, driving productivity, efficiency, and ROI.”

Bunchball. Accelerate adoption of your social software using gaming strategies. In a popular session, Bunchball’s founder and chief product officer Rajat Paharia demoed their Level Up gamification add on for IBM Connections. Bunchball places badges, trophies and even virtual goods into the IBM Connections environment to drive user adoption and engagement. Bunchball is a cloud based solution also making it a key integration partner for IBM Smartcloud.